Obesity remains a serious health problem and it is no secret that many people want to lose weight. Behavioral economists typically argue that “nudges” help individuals with various decisionmaking flaws to live longer, healthier, and better lives. In an article in the new issue of Regulation, Michael L. Marlow discusses how nudging by government differs from nudging by markets, and explains why market nudging is the more promising avenue for helping citizens to lose weight.

Armed with a computer model in 1935, one could probably have written the exact same story on California drought as appears today in the Washington Post some 80 years ago, prompted by the very similar outlier temperatures of 1934 and 2014.

Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses, have given rise to a growing libertarian movement in our country – with a greater focus on individual liberty and less government power. David Boaz’s newly released The Libertarian Mind is a comprehensive guide to the history, philosophy, and growth of the libertarian movement, with incisive analyses of today’s most pressing issues and policies.

Tag: Scientific American

November’s Scientific American features a profile of Georgia Tech atmospheric scientist Judith Curry, who has committed the mortal sin of reaching out to other scientists who hypothesize that global warming isn’t the disaster it’s been cracked up to be. I have personal experience with this, as she invited me to give a research seminar in Tech’s prestigious School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences in 2008. My lecture summarizing the reasons for doubting the apocalyptic synthesis of climate change was well-received by an overflow crowd.

Written by Michael Lemonick, who hails from the shrill blog Climate Central, the article isn’t devoid of the usual swipes, calling her a “heretic„ which is hardly at all true. She’s simply another hardworking scientist who lets the data take her wherever it must, even if that leads her to question some of our more alarmist colleagues.

But, as a make-up call for calling attention to Curry, Scientific American has run a poll of its readers on climate change. Remember that SciAm has been shilling for the climate apocalypse for years, publishing a particularly vicious series of attacks on Denmark’sBjorn Lomborg’s Skeptical Environmentalist. The magazine also featured NASA’s James Hansen and his outlandish claims on sea-level rise. Hansen has stated, under oath in a deposition, that a twenty foot rise is quite possible within the next 89 years; oddly, he has failed to note that in 1988 he predicted that the West Side Highway in Manhattan would go permanently under water in twenty years.

SciAm probably expected a lot of people would agree with the key statement in their poll that the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is “an effective group of government representatives and other experts.”

Hardly. As of this morning, only 16% of the 6655 respondents agreed. 84%—that is not a typo—described the IPCC as “a corrupt organization, prone to groupthink, with a political agenda.”

The poll also asks “What should we do about climate change?” 69% say “nothing, we are powerless to stop it.” When asked about policy options, an astonishingly low 7% support cap-and-trade, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in June, 2009, and cost approximately two dozen congressmen their seats.

The real killer is question “What is causing climate change?” For this one, multiple answers are allowed. 26% said greenhouse gases from human activity, 32% solar variation, and 78% “natural processes.” (In reality all three are causes of climate change.)

And finally, “How much would you be willing to pay to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change?” 80% of the respondents said “nothing.”

Remember that this comes from what is hardly a random sample. Scientific American is a reliably statist publication and therefore appeals to a readership that is skewed to the left of the political center. This poll demonstrates that virtually everyone now acknowledges that the UN has corrupted climate science, that climate change is impossible to stop, and that futile attempts like cap-and-trade do nothing but waste money and burn political capital, things that Cato’s scholars have been saying for years.

I regret not remembering where I found this and therefore not being able to thank the source for the link, but Scientific American writes about research on “sacred values” and negotiations. Describing “sacred values,” SciAm writes that when an object becomes sacred, it “becomes worthy of boundless reverence, commitment, and protection. As diverse as people are in ascribing sacred status to possessions, they are equally varied in which values they consider sacred, a diversity that can breed substantial conflict. The abortion debate, for example, often presents a divide between those who consider woman’s ‘right to choose’ sacred versus those who consider a fetus’ ‘right to life’ sacred.”

But the potentially important part for international politics is that

When people are asked to trade their sacred values for values considered to be secular…they exhibit moral outrage, express anger and disgust, become increasingly inflexible in negotiations, and display an insensitivity to a strict cost-benefit analysis of the exchange. What’s more, when people receive monetary offers for relinquishing a sacred value, they display a particularly striking irrationality. Not only are people unwilling to compromise sacred values for money—contrary to classic economic theory’s assumption that financial incentives motivate behavior—but the inclusion of money in an offer produces a backfire effect such that people become even less likely to give up their sacred values compared to when an offer does not include money. People consider trading sacred values for money so morally reprehensible that they recoil at such proposals.

If right, this is obviously an important challenge to those of us who have proposed offering Iran a grab-bag of goodies in exchange for opening its nuclear program to invasive international inspections. I haven’t read the study the article is drawn from very carefully, but I have a few immediate doubts.

The authors’ discussion of the “sacredness” of the Iranian nuclear program is pretty nebulous. They reference how “the nuclear dispute is essentially framed as an ongoing resistance with deep historical context.” They talk about how Iran asserts its “inalienable rights” and how it pledges it “will not retreat one iota.” But lots of disputes are couched in these sorts of terms. Are they all over “sacred values”?

They code respondents as holding Iran’s nuclear program as a sacred value if they select the statement that Iran shouldn’t give up its nuclear program “no matter how great the benefits are.” Isn’t it possible that the respondents see the United States as untrustworthy and fear that their country will get tricked into accepting a deal that can be easily broken? That there are no benefits that are great enough to offset an indigenous, autonomous nuclear capability?

Most importantly, if the authors are right, we’re probably in big trouble. They write that “in conflicts involving sacred values, symbolic compromises which may lack any material benefits, such as apologies for past disrespects, may be key to solving the issue.” My sense is that the Right in America has been winding up American nationalism so high that the Obama people are in no mood to confront it head on. From lapel pins to “apology tours,” to claims that Obama may be an “alien” and therefore an inherently illegitimate president, to claims that he doesn’t recognize that al Qaeda is an Enemy, to the Nobel prize, and on and on, apologizing to Iran probably isn’t something the administration is particularly keen on. So if apologizing to Iran for something or other is the key to solving the nuclear puzzle, get ready for trouble.